


A Boy Needs His Father

by Beth Harker (Beth_Harker)



Category: Newsies (1992)
Genre: Canon Era, Gen, Implied Child Abuse, Originally Posted on Tumblr, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-17
Updated: 2018-06-17
Packaged: 2019-05-24 09:08:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 374
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14951750
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Beth_Harker/pseuds/Beth%20Harker
Summary: Mush looked at the man in the black dress suit, to Kloppman, and back again. He shuffled uncertainly, hands fidgeting. He wasn’t supposed to be here eavesdropping. At eleven years old he was just a tiny scrap of a kid who could sink unnoticed into any shadow, but wrong was still wrong, even if you didn't get caught.





	A Boy Needs His Father

Mush looked at the man in the black dress suit, to Kloppman, and back again. He shuffled uncertainly, hands fidgeting. He wasn’t supposed to be here eavesdropping. At eleven years old he was just a tiny scrap of a kid who could sink unnoticed into any shadow, but wrong was still wrong, even if you didn't get caught.

As the man in black talked about a little boy named Louis, whose father was very much alive and had an apartment all his own down on fifth street, Mush’s throat tightened. He needed courage to do something, and the brains to know what that _something_ was. The nuns who had raised him, right up until he’d struck out on his own into the newspaper selling business, had sure as heck taught him not to lie.

Problem was, Kid Blink had suffered more at the hands of his pa than Mush ever had by being an orphan. Mush hadn’t known about the kinds of things Kid had told him before he’d heard them from the other boy’s mouth, and Kid couldn’t say much without getting scared, but what Mush had learned he couldn’t forget, not even for a second. He didn’t think he could let his worst enemy go back to that, much less his best friend.

Kloppman opened the black record book he kept on his desk, and Mush dashed out towards the man.

“I know the boy you’s talking about,” he said in a breathless rush. He told him that Louis lived at the Poplar Street Lodging House in Brooklyn, and the address fell easily off the tip of his tongue. He was not greeted with hellfire or brimstone, and no devil came to punish him for his untruth. The man left, and Duane Street was safe again.

“I know I done wrong,” Mush told Kloppman, “but Kid’s home ain’t with that man, and he ain’t going back.”

Kloppman looked Mush up and down slowly, like he was appraising him. He pushed his glasses higher up on the bridge of his nose. He nodded.

“I think there’s something we can do,” said the old man, and Mush swiped a hand across his eyes, wiping away a wetness that he would never admit was there.


End file.
